AN EVEN MORE UNFORTUNATE EXPERIMENT

Firstly was SID or Cot Death[3] which also came to be another unfortunate experiment, placing babies on their stomachs rather than their sides as advice from the “Neo Natal Unit”. Neonate sleeping recommendations were applied with naïve enthusiasm and only partly correlated with research to Post Natal care in this instance. This advice was widely used and taught for Post Natal recommendations. Never mind double blind studies, control groups and peer review and the whole pesky Ethics issue, the emotive desire to fix a problem outweighs the slow cumbersome bureaucratic system is the underlying reason to act quickly, and the early “evidence” justifies these actions. This Evidence Based Research along with Herbert Greens supposed “research” caused a revalidation of Ethics by the Medical Council, Medical Ethicists and the wider community here in NZ. But not in Social Engineering, the graveyard of DSW.

One self described “saviour” of this event is Ruth Herbert[4] who ostensibly overrode Evidence Based Research to turn back the tide of stomach sleeping advice. Her lesson wasn’t well learnt however as her passion for the next crusade completely overlooked her refusal to accept EBR and to unwittingly become a champion of the very method she had exposed.

The second under the Radar EBR programme, championed by many such as Herbert, mired in Feminist Politics and based completely on Evidence Based Research using a sample of only 9 people[5], was sought out, selected, implemented and lamented due to lack of measurable effect over a 20 year period. It has been one of the most divisive, destructive, and frustrating and as yet unresolved episodes in our Social Engineering history. It is of course DIAP[6], a tawdry, faulty, unscientific programme devised in, of all places, Duluth Minnesota home to Michael Moore’s, the American one, lampooning of defective thinking and inappropriate solutions via his Mockumentries. Over Chai Latte many a Feminist has even been heard to cognitively dissonate a retort that “there are other things out of Duluth” upon discussing Moore’s Mockumentries. Professor Dutton of UBC who had a long history with these programmes has collaborated with many others in an attempt to address this faulty EBR thinking.[7]

Even Dr Wallace Bain[8], the Rotorua Coroner reviewing one our darkest DV episodes, the Nia Glassie case, found 5 major factors, none of which were gender specific, and none with the intensity and blame of the Duluth programme and the years of IT’s Not OK campaign waged exclusively against men in this country. Violent parents exert just as much damage to a child regardless of gender and by following the naive response “its all men’s fault and all women and children are victims” tautology of DIAP we have reached a crescendo of exasperation in dealing with this issue. It even goes so far as to provide shelter for abusive parents and encourage their blame assigning behaviour and inability to accept responsibility for their actions, with the full support of state intervention. This is commonly called putting out the fire with gasoline and is the fundamental driver of our “DV statistics”.

The steps to resolving this situation are firstly to remove gender bias from our thinking and response systems, restore mandatory relationship counselling as a first front line response and completely reject and remove the DV programme we are currently running against all good International advise in this country.[9]